


In Circles

by ezlebe



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: ADD/ADHD, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Confessions, Jealousy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28659705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezlebe/pseuds/ezlebe
Summary: The lip balm catches Richie’s eye in the checkout at Target, a little yellow package hanging just above a spread of gift cards. He stares at it, idly holding a bag of coffee and a reusable bag in one hand and a pair of milk cartons in the other.The cashier clears their throat. “Sir?”“Sorry, uh,” Richie says, stacking his items on the empty belt, then reaching out and grabbing the cherry lip balm to throw in with an awkward jerk of his hand. “Here. This, too.”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 23
Kudos: 213





	In Circles

**Author's Note:**

> I started out Katy Perry, but then it took a right turn into Yo La Tengo.

The lip balm catches Richie’s eye in the checkout at Target, a little yellow package hanging just above a spread of gift cards. He stares at it, idly holding a bag of coffee and a reusable bag in one hand and a pair of milk cartons in the other.

The cashier clears their throat. “Sir?”

“Sorry, uh,” Richie says, stacking his items on the empty belt, then reaching out and grabbing the cherry lip balm to throw in with an awkward jerk of his hand. “Here. This, too.”

The cashier just nods, taking the lip balm and scanning it with a beep, then dropping it in with the milk and coffee. “$17.87.”

Richie has had a complicated history with lip balm, specifically that of the cheap cherry flavored variety. The sweet, somewhat medicinal smell never failed to twist his gut and send him into a yearning, distracted place, and after forgetting Derry he had simply avoided thinking about it entirely – at least, until he had come down with a visceral, nonsensical hatred for a particular pop song circa 2008. It hadn’t had anything to with the actual subject of the music, but he wouldn’t know that for almost a decade at that point, so he had _definitely_ blamed the music in a few particularly uncomfortable, tasteless, secretly self-flagellating bits.

Luckily, these days, Richie understands himself and lip balm a little better. He knows now that he wasn’t really irrationally put-off by sweet scented wax, he was actually irrationally _preoccupied_ by it – Or more precisely, the guy who sets and forgets the little tubes like crazy.

Eddie is slouched on the sofa when Richie shoulders open the door, television paused on some dating show in front of him while he scrolls on his laptop. He waves a vaguely when Richie clears his throat in half hearted greeting, but otherwise seems content to slowly become one with the cushion.

Richie drops the canvas bag on the kitchen island. “So I regret to report that I failed my mission, Commander K: they were out of the usual beans, so I had to get this other stuff. _But_ ,” he pauses, digging the lip balm out from under the coffee and walking over to the living room; he waves it in front of Eddie’s face from behind the couch. “Got this for you. I know you’re always losing them.”

“Oh.” Eddie plucks the box out of Richie’s fingers and turns it in his hands, peering at the label before looking upside down at Richie with a blink. “Wild cherry?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, feeling caught at the attention to that so small, so insignificant detail and forcing a shrug with one shoulder. “Just saw it and – and you know. You used to use it all the time.”

“Right, ChapStick,” Eddie says, his grin digging dimples into his turned up face. “Honestly, I think I just really liked how it tasted – is that weird?”

Richie blinks, then hears an awkward laugh crawl up out of his throat. “Kinda?”

Eddie grins wider, keeping his head propped up for a few beats longer, then looks down while picking at the packaging. “This probably has less chemicals. Thanks.”

“No problemo, Spaghetto,” Richie says, swallowing a little and turning around to go back to the bag in the kitchen.

 _Liked how it tasted_ ; hah. Richie himself used to think _a lot_ about the taste of that lip balm back when Eddie had been apparently eating it. He’s pretty sure he even got a little ironically chaffed he wondered about it so much.

He takes the milk out of the bag and stares at the cartons after he puts them on the counter. _Fridge_ , right. He should not be thinking about how he has more flavors to wonder about now, especially not this horchata one in the – _Wait_. Richie pulls the refrigerator door back open.

“Hey, man,” Richie says, dropping his fingers into the door shelf and fishing out the tube, then throwing it at the sofa. “This was in the fridge.”

“Oh shit,” Eddie swears, scrambling sideways and presumably grabbing the lip balm from where it landed on the cushion next to him. He waves it above his head while looking over his shoulder, brows furrowing, “Why the fuck did I put it in there?”

Richie hums his own bemusement, opening the cabinet for the coffee and blinking at a bright orange box; he pulls it out, reading the front, and clears his throat while shaking the box to make it rattle. “We still got some of your chickpea pasta – and some garlic. Do you want to do a tomato-basil thing?”

“Sure – wait, shit,” Eddie pauses, then exhales an unintelligible mutter. “ _No_. Maybe tomorrow – I have a thing at Bandera tonight. Fuck, I need to get ready for that. Like _right_ now.”

“Oh, cool,” Richie says, dropping the box a little into his side while he looks over his shoulder to watch Eddie stand from the couch. “Client thing?”

“Sorta, firm thing. But Bryant is picking me up,” Eddie says, mouth pressed into crooked line while he wraps his laptop cable loose around a fist; purportedly, it’s a _trip hazard_ if he just leaves it. “Well. An Uber Bryant is in.”

Ah, Bryant; he of the straight, white smile and perfectly moisturized, wrinkle-less face looking like goddamned Denzel Washington’s baby-faced son if he were in fucking fancy rich man insurance.

Richie kind of hates him. He’s technically never _spoken_ to him, only seen him wave at Eddie outside his office or pick him up at the curb, heard the seemingly _endless_ stories, but he… he doesn’t know what else to call it. Bitter, maybe. It took a while to get to that, since at first he was just relieved Eddie was making friends and settling into LA, but then the vaguely-motivated dinners started up multiple times a week, the fancy gin for Christmas, the soft, overheard laughter on calls, and Richie finally realized that Bryant was maybe more than a _friend._

It pretty much just… sucks.

He’s turned forty, revitalized his career, reconnected with old friends, and for bonus points officially _re_ -become that guy who creeps on the cute friend who is totally uninterested in him. And what sucks even more is that Eddie, clearly, doesn’t even feel comfortable telling him, and the reason is likely, in what is some tragic fucking way, partly to do with those _shitty Katy Perry bits_. He can’t think of any other reason Eddie would claim he was doing work meetings when he only sometimes came home with any recollection at all of _actual_ work.

Richie exhales a shallow breath, putting the box back in the cabinet. “Ah, okay. It’s not gonna go bad.”

“You could still have it,” Eddie says, his door swinging open down the hall with a whoosh of air and the sparest creak of a floorboard.

“Nah, I’m good,” Richie says, then drops his voice, tapping at the handle of a cabinet drawer just near his hand with his fingertips. “Probably have cereal. Got the milk and all.”

He scratches down his neck and glances at his phone when it buzzes; ah, apparently Stan and Patty are looking into rescuing lovebirds. Isn’t that nice? _Christ_.

Eddie re-emerges from his room a while later with his hair waxed and in a fitted black suit, carrying a matching jacket in one hand. It _could_ be actual work tonight, if he’s in that getup; usually, the _probably not_ work dinners are done in simply a nice pair of jeans. He slips the jacket over one shoulder, then looks to Richie while throwing out his sleeve, turning a little to gesture at it with his other arm. “Fuck, can you – “

“Sure,” Richie says, taking the sleeve and gently guiding Eddie’s bad arm into it. He hangs on a little longer than he knows he should, pretending to concentrate on linking together the cuff around Eddie’s wrist. “All put together.”

Eddie is actually looking back when Richie glances up, but he doesn’t try to pull away until Richie lets go first, turning his hand over in the sleeve while giving a nod. “Thanks, man.”

Richie salutes with a pair of fingers at his brow, glancing briefly toward the window and catching a car pulling just inside the gate. “Right on time.”

“Yeah, guess so,” Eddie says, walking over to the couch in a bewildering move. He leans down and picks up a familiar yellow tube, twisting to unseal it, then uncapping it with a pop.

Oh, he’s putting on the lip balm. Great, now Richie gets to think about Eddie getting ready to kiss Bryant hello in the damned Uber.

“I think it tastes better,” Eddie says, smacking his lips and looking unfairly disarming while looking up, pocketing the lip balm with a smile curling at the edge of his mouth. “Less like cough syrup.”

“Uh, good,” Richie says, leaning precariously against one of the bar stools, both hands wrapped tight around the seat. “Maybe you won’t leave it at the restaurant.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Eddie snaps, but he’s smiling – granted, that could be at whatever he’s looking down at on the _phone_ that he pulls out while going for the door.

* * *

Eddie is still holding his phone when he gets back, and Richie’s still at the kitchen island, but there’s a bowl in the sink and Eddie’s got a brown fiber to-go box in his other hand. He nods to Richie while shucking off his shoes, his jacket, waving with a lift of the box and half-opening his mouth like he’s about to say something, only to glance down at his phone and smile wide, choosing to instead start texting back a response.

Richie takes a shallow breath, dropping his head a little and smiling tensely to himself when Eddie _giggles_ brightly at something on the screen. Okay, he has to say something – it’s getting a little out of hand. He can be an objective, supportive friend, even if it makes his insides twist up into melancholy little corkscrews.

“You know, I’m cool if – ” Richie swallows, as his throat gets tight, staring at Eddie and seeing the lights from the Uber flash against the windows behind him when it pulls from the drive way. “If you’re like bi or whatever and going out with him – Bryant. I’m okay with it. You could tell me.”

Eddie hurriedly looks up from his phone with wide eyes and a dropped jaw, the fingers of his bad hand fumbling and dropping it to the ground while his other tightens on the to-go container. “ _What_?”

“Like.” Richie wets his lips, focusing for a second on the little indents on the box before forcing himself to look back to Eddie’s face and its darkening glower. “I wouldn’t be an asshole about it.”

Eddie continues to glare for a few seconds, briefly kneeling to pick up his phone, then suddenly his shocked, angry expression goes bizarrely soft, as his eyes dart side to side. “Rich, are you – Why do you look like you’re about to _cry_?”

“The fuck you talking about?” Richie says, or tries to, because: yeah, he definitely _feels_ like he’s about to cry, but he really doesn’t want to explain the shitty, stupid reason behind it.

“Look, Richie, yeah, I’m…” Eddie rolls his lips together, gesturing in front of himself with a jerky swipe of his hand. “Bi, _gay_ , or whatever, okay?” He takes a few steps forward and turns at the waist to put the container and phone on the counter. “But I’m not in a relationship – definitely not with _Bryant._ You would know before anyone else, okay?”

Richie clenches his jaw a little, biting at the inside of his lip.

“…I hope, anyway,” Eddie continues, exhaling a weak laugh that breaks down to a sigh. He stares at Richie for a few seconds, eyes darting back and forth while his hands flex in the narrow space between them. It almost seems like he’s hovering, standing so close, then his arms abruptly wrap around Richie’s neck to pull him down into a startling and slightly strangling hug. “Fuck, I – I’m _sorry_. I’ve been such a goddamned coward.”

Richie fails to totally blink the sting out of his eyes, hands lifting to uncertainly frame Eddie’s ribs. He swallows shallow, almost digging his head into Eddie’s shoulder before remembering it’s the bad one, though whatever soreness it had earlier has clearly faded. “…You’re not a coward.”

“And, shit – ” Eddie shakes his head, fingers catching in Richie’s hair while he sweeps a pleasant pat down to his neck. “Richie, you _already_ came out. I know you wouldn’t be an asshole about it.”

“Not officially,” Richie mutters, because he hadn’t _come out_ , he had just… panicked and improv’d a bit into admitting he’d never had any interest in dating a woman, let alone getting far enough along with one to have access to her social media. And maybe he had done it on a stage in front of roughly 2700 people and the Internet.

“Officially enough,” Eddie says, pulling back and pressing both hands into Richie’s shoulders with a tight squeeze of his palms. “The fucking Times had an opinion column about it, and I still promise it’s not bad, okay? You really _should_ read it.”

Richie swallows with a nod, managing to suppress that old skitter of discomfort far easier than he would have this time last year. He wishes the shit was gone completely, but at least it’s… lesser.

“Christ, Richie,” Eddie drags his teeth across his lips, biting down for a few silent seconds, then exhaling a harsh scoff. “I am so a coward. Yeah, I threw a fucking spear at a monster, but I can’t… I _haven’t_ been able to talk about this, not like I should have. With you.”

Richie blinks a little, startled, then realizes, as he rubs under his glasses, Eddie must mean in some sort of solidarity. “It’s cool, I get it’s a –”

“About how you look at me?” Eddie continues, his voice pitching markedly high.

“– personal thing.” Richie finishes, staring for a bemused beat, then the underlying meaning of the words washes over him in unwelcome epiphany and he feels a little like his sternum has cracked in on itself. “Oh, I – uh, I didn’t think – _Fuck_.”

“Okay, _shit_ , I shouldn’t have said it like that.” Eddie steps forward in a hasty rush, hands going up in front of Richie again with a sweep and a few tetchy, swiping gestures. “Basically, basically: I’m just scared, alright? I’m bad with change and there's been so much of it, lately – it gives me fucking anxiety. _Obviously._ Every-goddamn-thing does.”

“ _You’re_ scared?” Richie asks, trying desperately to use a Voice and hating the way it just comes out small.

Eddie doesn’t say anything for a too long time, just breathing hard and standing close. “Can we sit down?” He asks, almost a whisper, his hands landing on Richie’s forearms with a surprisingly strong grip. “You look like you’re about to crash.”

Richie swallows and lets his shoulders fall, moving along when Eddie guides him toward the couch rather than to one of the closer stools in the kitchen. He glances down at his hands with a tight twist of his fingers, startling despite himself when Eddie crowds in close to him on the cushions.

“Okay, so.” Eddie exhales a harsh breath, hastily swiping a hand down his face with a brief rub into his eyes. “First, I’m not interested in Bryant. He actually thinks I was like _your_ secret for years and then we – we decided to come out and move in together when marriage was legalized.” He grimaces, mouth pinching and twisting, as he gestures cyclically with his hands between them. “It’s a thinner plot than one of Bill’s books, but I – I like him thinking it, so I let him, because I... might wish it was true.”

Richie takes a few seconds to speak hyper aware of the edgy look in Eddie’s eyes, but his tongue feels thick in his mouth. “But all the avoiding and - and fake work dinners –” He narrowly manages to avoid the word _sneaking,_ but it had felt like that with Eddie’s constant, too bright insistence it was _only_ clients and firm commitments. “And the uh, uh – The presents…?”

“Okay, so fine, we do just hang out a lot, but I didn’t want you to… _Shit_ , which fucking backfired.” Eddie drags his teeth over his lip and exhales hard, leaning a little into himself while pressing into his eyes again with a shake of his head. “The gin was actually for both of us,” he says, looking back up with a wan smile. “He’s somehow intimidated by you, because you’re famous. That’s why he never comes in.”

Richie raises his brows higher and higher throughout the tirade, though a tension in his shoulders that has been there for what feels like forever seeps out of them. And _what_ , Bryant is intimidated by _him_? He glances between blinks toward the liquor cabinet slash writing hutch. “I hate gin.”

“I know,” Eddie says, scratching with his thumb up his brow while a smirk twitches at the corner of his mouth. “But I really don’t, so. Yeah. He also thinks I’m – ” He gestures, eyes rolling as his words pitch even higher and come quicker, “Cool older gay dude with his life together, which I don’t know where he gets from even his own fucking story, but – like, he thinks I’m wing-manning when I just sit there? I don’t fucking know, but he invites me to way too much LA shit. _I’m_ not dating him, Rich, but shit I do want him to get _someone_ , so I can stay at fucking home on a goddamn Tuesday! I don’t know why the fuck he thinks I’m interesting.”

“It’s probably the scars,” Richie says, reaching out to poke at Eddie’s cheek on a whim and grinning a little at the tetchy swipe he gets for the trouble.

“Shut up,” Eddie says, visibly winding down while rubbing himself at the mark with a twisting frown. “Fuck, maybe _.”_

“Or…” Richie takes a shallow breath, trying not to pay attention to the way his heart seems to be stuttering behind his ribs. He’s said so much shit as a joke, but apparently Eddie just already knew, “Maybe he just thinks you are, ‘cause you _are._ You’re cool as fuck, Eddie.”

Eddie blinks back for a startled beat, then huffs through his nose with a glance down at his hands. “This isn’t really how I thought about this going; the talking about – about how I – _we_ feel? Except, I guess, that you’d be the one to say something…” He glances down with a particularly wincing manner of grin. “So I wouldn’t have to.”

“But I – I didn’t like actually want you to know?” Richie admits weakly, wincing and looking away from Eddie’s immediate and comically deep frown. “I’m not stupid, Eds; I know I’m the total creep in this scenario, you know, thinking about you like that when you were – I _thought_ you’re just trying to be my friend. So I didn’t want you to think I was just, uh, some dumbfuck who gets butthurt that you’re not into me.”

Eddie narrows his eyes into something nearly a glare, jaw shifting and plainly unsatisfied by the explanation.

“Especially after I thought, you know,” Richie mutters, glancing toward the front drive, throwing a thumb out over his shoulder with a reluctant grimace. “I’m not that much of an ass.”

Eddie is quiet a few seconds longer, then exhales hard, chin lifting with an odd nerve. “I am.”

Richie blinks and feels his expression fold, shrinking with bewilderment. “What – how?”

“When people hit on you,” Eddie says, straightening next to Richie on the couch like he’s suddenly begun to testify.

Richie glancing down and back up between blinks, then snorts while forcing a smirk. “No one hits on me.”

“They do, Richie,” Eddie says, firm, brows going up as he leans forward a little and his knee knocks up against Richie’s leg. “But like a lot of shit: you never notice. Like… _Like_ last week, a barista wrote their number on your drink? So I traded cups with you at the table and put a sleeve over it.”

Richie narrows his eyes slightly, trying to remember, but – Nope, he hasn’t got a thing. “…Huh,” he says, raising his brows with a hard, exaggerated exhale through his nose. “I really should not be into that.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says primly, a smirk curling up at the edge of his mouth. He leans that much closer, and Richie realizes abruptly that there are barely inches between their faces; that Eddie’s hand has its knuckles against the top of his thigh. “Hey, what would you do if… if I kissed you, right now?”

Richie pretends to scoff, gesturing flippantly as he can, as heat blooms across the back of his neck. “Kiss back, _duh_?”

Eddie rolls his eyes at the same time the hand on Richie’s leg moves with more purpose, turning over and shifting to balance while he moves with intent. He’s plainly careful, broadcasting everything, as he leans into Richie with an inviting turn of his head.

The warning doesn’t really do much to temper the shock, and Richie hears himself gasp the moment Eddie’s predictably soft lips touch his own, eyes closing with a shudder and lifting his hand to hesitantly hold onto Eddie’s shoulder. He thinks he might whine a little when Eddie parts his lips, and knows he does when Eddie ultimately pulls away chastely rather than deepening the kiss.

He wets his lips and glances across Eddie’s flushed face, easily offering a grin. “Not bad first, eh?”

“Oh, uh,” Eddie intones, worryingly shrinking a into himself with a hunch. “It’s not actually the first time,” he says, the revelation spoken in a uncharacteristically quiet, mumbling rush.

Richie stares for a beat, then takes a sharp breath; did he do something and _forget_ nearly thirty years ago? “What do you mean: it’s not – ?” He pauses, eyes widening involuntarily as he realizes what singular occasion could make Eddie wince like that, and it’s not some forgotten, drunken, teenage joke. “Holy shit, you Ben’d me?”

“Surprise?” Eddie says, reaching up and running a hand across his waxed hair.

Richie wets his lips, memories that never happened resurging with the usual godawful pang; he peeks down and gently sweeps the flat of his knuckles down the length of Eddie’s bad arm. “ _That’s_ why It just got your arm…”

“It’s fine,” Eddie insists, like he always does, though at least he doesn’t try to demonstrate bending it backward this time, which pretty much never ends well. “Now you know the real reason I didn’t try to drag you or whatever.”

“You’re so fucking cute,” Richie says, allowing himself to speak it with plain, unexaggerated truth. “I wish you’d said.”

“Shut up. I was worried you’d be mad,” Eddie says, his voice lowering with a quick drop and flick of his eyes. He abruptly reaches out and grabs Richie’s hand, pressing it warmly between his two soft, uncalloused palms. “Like… Bev kind of was with Ben?”

Richie shakes his head. “No,” he says, dragging his teeth across his lip with a small shrug. “She’s different.”

“…Yeah,” Eddie agrees, an awkward, tight grimace pinching briefly across his mouth.

“Hey,” he says, shifting his hand and turning it over, spreading his fingers wide and swallowing hard when Eddie just keeps fiddling with his fingers. “So how come I didn’t notice you look at _me_ all serious crush, huh?”

“Because you _never_ do,” Eddie hisses, eyes lighting up, then his voice swiftly, unexpectedly rises into the familiar tone of a rant. He lets go of Richie to gesture widely, smacking Richie in the shoulder in a way that was likely only _sort of_ an accident. “Like just today, I was not even _subtle_ about wanting to spider-man kiss you after you handed me the chapstick. And my jacket? I didn’t even need you to do that, like I put on my fucking shirt, didn’t I? I just wanted that memory when I thought about you taking it off. Like, shit, I fucking _wish_ you had an ounce of goddamn awareness.”

Richie raises his brows with a startled blink, heat flaring across his face. “Oh. I uh, I guess I thought you just liked the butler Voice?”

“Dumbass,” Eddie says, tone softening and smile growing, shoving at Richie’s shoulder, then opening his hand and firmly wrapping it around his arm. “I should’ve known something was up when you didn’t use it.”

Richie forces a grin back and tries not to admit that the Bryant thing is not actually a recent revelation. Or, well, an anti-revelation… a misunderstanding? An unpleasant, misguided belief that Eddie was lying to him _for months_?

“Now you…” Eddie leans in closer, hand sliding higher on the curve of Richie’s shoulder; the press of it is solid and warm, easily distracting Richie from his thoughts. It seems like he might be angling for another kiss, but instead he just stops barely an inch from contact. “What’re _you_ thinking about when you look at me?”

“What?” Richie chokes, clearing his throat weakly while shrugging up to his ears with an anxious laugh. “Um, uh… lately, it’s just – I guess all the lip balms? You know, like… kiss- _kissing_ the flavor off?”

Eddie opens his mouth slightly as his brows furrow, only to close it again before he actually says anything, expression faltering for a few beats longer, until his lips eventually twitch into a smirk. “And you just called _me_ the cute one?”

“Well, you know…” Richie can’t manage his own smirk, but he tries, though he’s pretty sure it just looks a little helpless. “Yeah?”

“Stay here,” Eddie says, eyes rolling while he reaches out to slap Richie in the leg with the back of his hand. “That whole gross-out persona is such a fucking front.”

“Is not,” Richie mutters, playing sullen, but since every inch of his skin from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head is on fire from a single kiss… It’s going to be points to Kaspbrak.

Richie listens to Eddie dig around behind him, steps drifting up and down the halls into various rooms. He turns to look over the back of the couch, angling across it enough to catch Eddie disappear into what seems to be the bathroom. “Eds?”

“Just wait a fucking second!” Eddie snaps, at the same moment there’s a clatter in a drawer.

“Okie-doke,” Richie mutters, exhaling a quiet laugh while turning to slump back into the cushion. He looks down at his hands, tapping them across his thighs; he could probably get up and get his phone, right? He shifts to move, but then hears Eddie coming back down the hall, and instead just drops back down and looks over to catch Eddie returning with a visible _bundle_ of colored tubes in hand.

“Okay,” Eddie says, clearing his throat while sitting back on the couch, pressing up firmly and a little startlingly against Richie’s side and down his thigh. “I found these ones – pear, caramel apple, cherry, pomegranate, and… and this one I can’t read, but I think is cucumber mint by the smell of it. And the horchata is fucking somewhere around here.”

Richie stares down at the display for a few solid, bemused seconds, then realizes belatedly he must be meant to _pick_ one, so reaches out to flick at the cherry tube. He hopes it looks careless, but he’s also pretty sure it was obvious he didn’t so much as consider the others – he’ll angle for caramel apple later, which has been pretty damned diverting in itself, since the smell of it can cross a room.

Eddie snorts a little and drops the rest behind him while palming the cherry, then sends a narrow glance upward with a blink. “Rich, have you been thinking about this since we were _kids_?”

“Uh, yep,” Richie admits, thankful that the word only sounds a _little_ pitchier than it normally might. “You’ve got a lot of fantasy to live up to, Spageds.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, uncapping the tube with a jerky twitch of his hands. “Uh huh,” he says, going through motions that Richie has studied countless times from much further away. “I’m not sure I can live up to scented kisses, you Victorian fuck. You want me to cover my ankles and wrists, so you don’t prematurely blow?”

Richie blinks widely, then swallows hard before exhaling a weak laugh. “Shit, your mouth is so dirty,” he says, looking away a little while Eddie smacks his shiny lips – okay, extremities are definitely not going to be the issue.

“You know, they make tinted stuff,” Eddie says, shifting onto his knees next to Richie, cushions dipping at the seam and angling them closer together. “Same brand. I saw it in the store.”

“I might jack my dick straight off,” Richie answers honestly, a little caught off guard at the way Eddie is suddenly grabbing his shoulders and tilting him bodily to face him. He looks up at Eddie, at the dark, heated look in his eyes, and feels his face burn even brighter. “ _Hey_.”

“Hey.” Eddie grins back, elbow dropping against Richie’s shoulder and his mouth soon following suit.

Eddie’s lips are sweet-scented and tacky this time, sliding against Richie’s at a slightly awkward angle. Richie turns his head while he slips his hand across the back of Eddie’s nape, sliding a thumb over the back of an ear while opening his mouth in a groan. It seems to prompt Eddie to move, though not pull away, climbing into Richie’s lap in the space of a gasping breath, remedying the angle with a gasp that gives Richie a glancing taste of saccharine cherry.

“Everything you dreamed of, Trashmouth?” Eddie asks, breaking off for a deeper breath just before pressing another cherry kiss to the corner of Richie’s mouth; the lip balm makes it last, leaving a tacky, physical tingle.

“And more,” Richie says, aiming for some slightly mocking, breathy Voice and utterly failing when the words just come out his own. He palms up Eddie’s dress shirt, smirking a little when the fabric wrinkles under his fingertips. “Like the suit wasn’t really in the fantasy, but I’m pretty into it.”

Eddie huffs quietly, nose curling while he reaches up to tug at a button. “It’s actually a little uncomfortable.”

“Is it?” Richie says, feigning surprise with a wide blink. He feels a little daring while looking down and not-quite tracing the inseam of Eddie’s trousers to the very evident source of discomfort. “You’ll have to call Bev – maybe she can do something about that for you.”

“Don’t test me,” Eddie says, leaning in while pressing his thumb against a place on Richie’s neck that makes him feel a little boneless. “It’s not too late over there, I’ll totally do it – _Hey Siri!_ ”

Richie throws his head against the cushions with a laugh when he hears Eddie’s phone blip in the kitchen. “Don’t test _you_? Siri, call B – !”

“Don’t you dare, Richie!” Eddie snaps, shoving into Richie at the shoulders with both hands.

Richie uses the opportunity to slide sideways on the couch, pretending as if any strength was put into the gesture, and holds Eddie’s bad arm steadily while pulling him down on top. He oomphs when Eddie presses down with another cherry flavored, open-mouthed kiss, exhaling a laugh between them that he can quickly feel answered with a grin.

The phone blips behind them. “ _Sorry, I missed that. Could you say it again, please?”_

**Author's Note:**

> Bryant eventually got a weird boyfriend who speaks in riddles about time and _loves_ wearing shimmer.
> 
> I can also be found on twitter [ @ ezlebe](https://twitter.com/ezlebe?lang=en)
> 
> ~~Also, this is the quickest I've written a fic since like 2016 and it's 90% nervous talking, so sorry for... that sort of quality.~~


End file.
